How To Outline A Romance Novella
Everyone has a different approach to writing — some outline extensively, others jump straight into writing. With April’s Camp NaNoWriMo coming up, you might be considering this for your own story.
When I was just starting out as a professional writer, I loathed outlines. I thought that planning everything out made actually writing it boring and stifled my creativity. But once I started doing fast fiction with Bryant Street Shorts, I quickly came to the realization that without an outline, I would never meet my 4-5 week deadlines. It was difficult to adjust my process but after a few different attempts, I finally found an outlining process that works for me. If you also struggle with outlines, or are just looking to try them out, try this method!
This is my tried-and-true Outlining Process. with examples. With this process, I write 35-40k novellas in about four weeks. Click through on the image to save an Infograph with the steps for later!
SPOILERS FOR MY CURRENT WIP BELOW! This will spoil the book so proceed with caution.
Before you outline, you need is a story idea. You probably have that if you’re here! But try to figure out if you understand that story. In any genre, there are specific beats that you’ll need to make sure you’re hitting — or, if you’re not hitting them, you need to understand why and how you’re going to defy those reader expectations. With Romance, there are a few staples of the genre that you’ll need to include: most importantly, the meet cute, the love realization, the pull away, and the happily ever after/happy for now (TIP: If you don’t have an HEA/HFN, then it categorically cannot be Romance.)
When I’m working on a story that feels out of reach or when I try in a different genre, I always use Dan Harmon’s story circle. The story circle is a twist on the Hero’s Journey that helps you understand the MC’s motivations and journey as well as the plot. For my BSS work, I very rarely do this, as I follow the typical Romance structure, but this is my recommended pre-Outlining resource if you’re looking for one! (TIP: If you’re doing a Romance, do a story circle for both characters — the Love Interest needs a life and motivation outside of the relationship, too!)
Okay. You’ve got a good idea, you understand who your MCs are, and you understand what the plot is going to look like. Write it down in a small pitch — don’t worry about it sounding great, just get the main ideas out so when you’re deep in the outline, you can come back to stay on track.
Great! Now we can start actually outlining.
STEP ONE:
Plot out your story beats — the things we talked about above, like the Meet Cute, the realization of feelings, the pull away, love confession, and HEA!
As you can see here, I’m using a Meet Ugly instead of a Meet Cute to emphasize the enemies-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic that I’m working with this time.
I also write Dual POV, so the Realization of Feelings has to be two chapters so that we get that moment from both POVs.
My Pull Away section is also a little bit bare, but that’s because I want the tension to be more front-loaded than post-realization.
STEP TWO:
Time to add the fluff scenes! For me, these are the scenes that usually made me excited about the project in the first place. What scenes do you know you want to include? Make sure to write them in now!
Add as many or as few here as you want! For me, I knew this book was going to have a lot of Farmer’s Market scenes and baking scenes. I didn’t need to add specifics into that yet because that’s sort of the whole premise of the book — but these other two scenes are ones I know I want in, so I’m adding them now.
STEP THREE:
Add any foreshadowing you want included! If you want the readers to have an AHA! moment, you need to plot that in carefully. Don’t wait until the last minute or it might be either too heavy or too light. The right foreshadowing offers readers a moment afterwards where they think about how well that story fit together, not that they’re surprised by the ending. For this book, which is fairly simplistic in plot/nature, there’s not really any foreshadowing. No need for me to plot that in!
STEP FOUR:
Fill in the rest! This is where you go chapter by chapter and mark it down. For my books, which average 40k words total with 2k chapters, I need to plot out 20 chapters total (including an Epilogue). I make sure to re-read my pitch and start a new Google Doc. I add my physical descriptions and any other facts I’m likely to forget and need to refer to when writing (locations/siblings/etc). Then, I start plugging in what I’ve already plotted out above in a numbered list. After that, it’s just filling out the rest of the chapters. (TIP: Fast Fiction writers: don’t plan out your Epilogue just yet. I recommend waiting until you’ve finished the draft and given it a read-through or edit. Then, you’ll be able to see if there are any throw-away lines that you forgot about writing that would be a good closing scene, like if a character mentions something as particularly romantic or their favorite holiday or something. This also helps me to make sure all my Epilogues match my finished story and not just the idea of the plot I had at the beginning.)
Here are the first five chapters of my WIP. As you can see, some bits from the above planning are included — like the Meet Ugly (chapter 2) and a Fluff Scene I wanted to include (chapter 5).
There’s not a ton of info here and it’s clearly riddled with Typos, but it gets the job done! It has enough to keep me on track without bogging down the creativity of just diving into scenes.
And that’s how I outline my romance novellas! Everyone has different styles and needs with an outline, but I find that this process works best for my type of writing. If you try this out, make sure to tag me @unrealimogen or @emcanady and let me know how it goes!
If you want to read the first chapter of Peaches and Honey and see how this outline transfers into the written chapter, hop on over to my Patreon! All Best Friend and Love Of My Life tier patrons have exclusive access to the first chapter of this sapphic romance.
